If the director can articulate a material doubt, it is appropriate for the director to request additional evidence. See, e.g., Matter of Chawathe, 25 I&N Dec. 369 (AAO 2010), sustaining the applicant’s appeal of his N-400 denial where he provided “relevant, probative and credible” evidence that he satisfied the statutory requirements for naturalization where his employer’s SEC filing and the company support letter he submitted were “relevant” and “uncontroverted by other evidence.”In one recent case filed by our firm on behalf of a billion-dollar multinational publicly traded corporation in support of its petition to transfer one of its employees to the U.S. on an L-1 visa, we submitted a copy of the company’s most recent Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

se federal court decision, USCIS certified the case to the AAO. Matter of Z, File WAC 13 103 50466. Happily, on September 13, 2013 the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) overturned USCIS on its incorrect decision. The AAO took the CSC to task for “incorrectly inferring” that the manager would be directly involved in sales, despite the fact that he was going to supervise a sales manager and a sales team located at the parent company’s overseas location. The AAO’s final statements in this excellent, well-reasoned decision summarize the proper standard: “While the beneficiary is required to apply his business expertise in carrying out his job duties and perform some operational or administrative tasks, the petitioner has established by a preponderance of the evidence that the majority of the day-to-day non-managerial tasks associated with the function he manages are performed by his staff of ten direct and indirect subordinates and by external service providers. Matter of Chatwathe, 25 I&N Dec. 369, 376 (AAO 2010). As the statutory definition discusses managerial capacity as a function of the duties that the beneficiary “primarily” performs, the petitioner need only establish that the beneficiary devoted more than half of his time to managerial duties. The petitioner has met that burden.” I congratulate this company and their counsel in standing up to USCIS and fighting for justice for their beleaguered L-1A manager. While the September 13th AAO decision has not yet been designated as a precedent decision, it absolutely should be. It is time for the AAO to designate precedent decisions that confirm the proper legal standards to be applied by USCIS and get the adjudications back on the right track. To do otherwise would be counter-productive and contrary to the interests of the global business community.